July 4th, 2016 marks the 7th anniversary of my ordination. I had almost forgotten the personal importance of this day until I saw a blog post from another Pagan writer where she wrote about the anniversary of her own ordination.
For a long time ordinations were not something I took very seriously. They reeked of organized, mainstream religion. As a typical, angry, pseudo-anarchist young person, I had zero time for those types of distractions. Ordinations seemed to be something that Christians had to earn after years of brainwashing seminary, or something that was handed to them by a congregation hungry for “the word.”
“In Latgalia [a region of Latvia] they say, 'Oh, as soon as the missionaries left, we all just jumped in the river and washed it off, anyway.'” (Sean McLaughlin)
It's the first of the traditional Three Questions asked by the Horned at an initiation (and later repeated during the Renewal of Vows):
Do you renounce the waters of baptism?
Old Craft initiations are very different from Wiccan ones. They're not secret at all. Those who wish to take the Oath must first know the Oath. How can you swear to something that you haven't had the chance to think through thoroughly? You need to know what you're letting yourself in for. One cannot join the Tribe of Witches all unwitting.
This is maybe the scariest topic for me- yet somehow I feel ready and eager to move into it. Maybe it's because the nightingales were singing so daringly this morning, or it's the storm raging outside.
There are countless books which will tell you the right way to do your initiation.I’ve read a number of them, both for covens and for solitary.None of them spoke to me.
Normally I’m a simple, as little fuss as possible, type of person.Once I felt I was ready to declare my beliefs, I decided to do a ritual – full out, go for broke ritual.I had it typed up, planned out, everything was going to go PERFECT.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...